How To DAO - how to build sustainable business

Transcript

[Music] okay who has participated in a DA before are you still participating oh wow you guys are build differently uh I participated in a few Dows uh most actually have failed but I also started a dow uh if you're not familiar I started Hot Pot D it's basically people gathering together and eat hot pots I found that to be the most equalitarian we to hang out with people because there's no money involved there's no deals cross it's just people come in and hang out but I've been like really interested in D and actually how to build sustainable Dow business uh so far we've only had um people sponsor hot

pots but I'm looking forward to learning more and here is uh ponar thank you thank you for the introduction uh so yeah I'm punar uh punar h2d on Twitter or punar on faras and Linkedin uh I C her uh a book about house which will be published January 21st so I will let you know everyone when is the pre-sale starting so you can buy and support uh and I also have a small Consulting shop so helping other Dows and uh I also started a workout though and we will be talking about this projects uh a little bit more but I prepar this talk to start a little bit

with a big picture so questions at the beginning any of you know why North America like United States Canada are very richer than like South American countries dictor well dictatorship is something what might be like the influence like bipartisan dictatorship yeah so well yes basically the dictatorship or basically not economical Freedom it's basically what caused all the like fa of the countries in South America and it

goes way back basically with the colonization of uh North America and versus South America because uh Spain and other countries colonized the South were very extractive and didn't allow any economical Freedom therefore they just basically took it and didn't support the local environment on the other hand and uh in the United States they they tried to be extractive didn't work out so they had to actually open the market and like the local people actually start doing businesses and basically start producing value and basically from that time the United States just grow and why I'm talking about it at the beginning because if you

want to build any sustainable business we need to really have the environment for it because if there is no environment nor free EnV environment there is nothing we can actually build and example is where you know extraction can be really bad and we should really think about it when we are building our businesses to not be extractive but more like value creation it's based on some like historical examples of some uh Revolution or Innovations so there are couple we can start medieval Innovations there were Technologies like new technologies which supported basically like producing more from less work

however because those Technologies were owned by a few people again it just produced a lot of wealth for those land owners and Mills owners but majority of people 99% of people got actually worse worse off and the same is going in the industry Revolution where there are factories and again you know factories owners very rich people but the people working there were not very rich and you know child labor and so on again very extractive maybe the digital transformation was a little bit better because we all have access to Internet who doesn't have access to Internet oh nobody so everyone has

access to Internet so that's cool we can share the information uh you know we can build uh businesses on the internet however again you know there are many big companies which are taking most of the value like Facebook Amazon and stuff so again we are getting more disparities in the in the income and now we are coming to blockchain so how we can learn from the past to basically do better now so I think we have the biggest opportunity of our times to basically build free open market really support the economical Freedom build more

businesses and create more value for everyone involved because there is no Gatekeepers there's no banks which can tell you like no you cannot transact on our chain uh there are no border restrictions because like blockchains are basically everywhere so we can transact between each other even though I might be here in check some of you might be in the United States or maybe somewhere in Asia Africa and we can still transact on the on the same Financial system so I think this is the biggest Revolution yet because compared to the others we are not giving power to the few to the couple owners but we are basically giving power to everyone to

build uh businesses so the question is and everyone is probably asking how we can all become rich uh because like you know we are here for the fun for the impact for the public goods but we also need to pay our bills and we want to you know uh feel good about what we are doing so uh basically these days like it's way easier than any time before to become a billionaire but way harder to become a millionaire and this I think we need to change in a sense like it's nice that like it's easy to become a billionaire but that will be the 0.01% of people and then again the rest will

be worse off so what we can do is really start building in the way that everyone can become a millionaire and we support uh basically the group so one of the examples I put like how we can basically distinguish between I would say a little bit more extractive business model and a little bit more like uh value creation business model is the difference between ens and Dogecoin so who has here uh ens handle perfect who knows what ens is okay so basically everyone so you know ethereum name naming Service uh you can have your ens handle

so it's way easier uh for people to share kind of like the account number uh I have pun car. so I can just give it to you I don't need to give you uh you know the whole number and letters and we can transact uh way easier we can have some identity and so on and ens is earning revenue from it so they are earning approximately uh $2 million in a in a month from it and it it's really nice basically sustainable business model because they are earning debt Continuum it's not anything like it will just Spike and it will be just uh super crazy and then go down and on the other hand like Dogecoin there is the great Community aspect I'm

not taking that from it however who is earning the most money from from a Dogecoin uh again the few because most of the revenue goes to uh miners or companies like Robin Hood because like the trading fee on the Dogecoin is basically what it's getting created so there is not really too much value creation it's just like fun game a little bit of gamble maybe a community but again extracting value to the big companies and what I like about the ens is that that Revenue what they are taking they are actually Distributing kind of back to the

community and you know they are funding the public goods like the ens small grants program they distributed around like 130 E2 projects uh they supported some gitcoin grants so again and other public goods building the ecosystem larger and really Distributing the value and of course they are uh supporting their own internal development because it's important for their business to grow to be sustainable and really uh become bigger and uh can support uh more things so now we are getting maybe into actually the topic of this this talk uh sorry for the historical detour but I just wanted to

you see how I'm thinking basically about the building a business really from the big picture perspective and you know one of one of the things like which I learned uh during my time in crypto and before crypto is like you know it's really important to building together like there it's very statistically rare to actually be a solo founder because it's it's hard you know it's uh being alone and doing something it can be also you know very bad impact on your psychological health and so on so you know the first advice uh I would give to everyone is like find someone you want to build with so you can support each

other and also maybe someone more experienc so you know uh take the advice uh from them because if someone already built something successful they might know a thing or two uh how to build the next uh thing and now we are getting into uh the like more uh detailed examples and like it's called how to Dow so how is this related to uh to Dow actually you know the Dow thing for me is it's actually connected to the uh Financial system which is democratic worldwide what we what I talk about at the beginning and that's where you can

create more value and you can distribute it uh further but to be able to distribute it you need to have some value creation so as ens basically it's good to have a business model which is coming and having some Revenue uh towards your project so there are users which appreciate the service therefore they will pay for it it's very hard for Dows to become sustainable if they do not have any income there are many examples of dows which are basically running on the wipes and fumes and stuff and it can be nice for a little bit and they can raise some money with some a

meme token however the value when it's not created it's never sustainable so when you are thinking about your next project think like that maybe at some point there needs to be also some money coming in not just money uh coming out and then how basically you are Distributing that value so the governance and the tokenomics again very important in the ens example like the community the token holders are actually voting on who is getting the grants who is getting the value what internal development they will be supporting and as this basically group it's getting larger it's way better for the distribution uh of the

money so even though shortterm might be advantageous to be uh dictator uh from the historical perspective like it's never getting too far so I will I set the example at the beginning between like South and North Korea like there might be on both sides at some point dictatorship but one supported really like the economical freedom and now we have South Korea very rich the other one didn't so you know supporting the ecosystem it's really important from the long-term perspective of your uh business and incentive alignment like I will be talking about it from one specific project I built

it's like you know how you keep those people those very good resources within your community because if people are just coming and going and in used to be a a thing in doubts that you can just come and go and that's kind of the advantages like there is no Continuum and there there is the context is missing and it's usually because there is no alignment in the incentive of people working on their project so you know the incentive needs to be aligned within the community so you can really push uh the development long term further and some some mistakes I have seen um there is actually a statistic that uh the most successful Founders are usually

givers means like they are supporting other people within their ecosystem and how they are getting the value it's maybe not direct but the ecosystem as it grows and produce more value everyone in that ecosystem is is better off so even though some people are really great like deal makers if they are like dealmakers that they are just extracting it's again very short shortterm thing and they might get good deal or two but eventually basically because the value is not created but just extracted it will fall apart another uh mistake which some Dows are doing is they want to launch like a

big Community 10,000 people 100,000 people in the Discord uh last bull market uh you probably saw the examples like you know nft launches and now we have 10 20 million of dollars in the treasury we have 10,000 people on Discord but we have no idea what to do because like we just came here because it was nice picture but it was not really uh there was no Mission Vision how we actually build uh something with it good example you can check its nounce Dow which you know growing gradually just once one ounce a day and basically they are getting new member every day and because the community is just

growing gradually they are still very aligned what they are want to build and they become very successful and it's because of the design of how they are actually growing the third one um I would say it's not that much mistake on the on the Dow side but you know getting external validation from users can get you way better deals uh when you actually uh start raising funds uh if you are just getting the first validation from VCS it might be a little bit off if that actually will be something what users will want and also the V VCS would hesitate uh to do it and some projects which has great idea but when this road to fundraise first might

just like never succeed but they could have because it was uh really good product they just didn't try to launch it soon and now a couple examples of what I build and you know what I learn from it because I think like the best what I can talk about is what I have done and where I failed or succeeded uh and you can learn from it uh and also I would appreciate any advice on some of my failures um and we can talk about it after so first one it's bankas Consulting so it's a small consulting company we started 3 years ago and the I think the best thing was it

had really good Revenue generation model you know we are helping the project they are paying for the work and that's a income and people who are working on the project are getting paid so that was a good thing what happened to us that we had really clear like how we are actually earning money also uh because we were part of the bankless now we had really big pool of resources we could have used and we have really great mix of resources there were like developers to economics experts governance business experts so whatever project came to us we could have offer uh those services and there were there were no outliers in the in the revenue

it was not like me are taking 50% of the of the money from there really it was like very well distributed towards all the contributors which kind of help also to keep all the contributors around and work as a team what we learned though uh short-term project strategies so our offering was very shortterm therefore we had to find new projects all the time and it's just very timec consuming and uh in the bare Market gets even harder and harder sorry uh and then uh unclear long-term incentive program so we we were about to launch a token or you know do some like Equity distribution but we couldn't really come up with like great

plan or great like um mechanism we want to use so we never launch anything therefore you know those people who were involved might felt a little bit like you know we don't want to get them in and I think that was one of the issue we had um and what we learned that we actually need to have something like that and the last two bro scope like it's good to a little bit narrow it and focus on what you know the best uh other than trying everything and then you know it's very hard to uh manage so you know the future profits coming basically from the mistakes really like having long-term incentive program to keep the community together and growing together

and getting value uh from everyone I think is the biggest thing what uh we want to do now how to doubt uh so that's another project uh started as a community project uh also from banglas Dow uh so if you new to Dows um basow is great start there are so many people who can you know help you and also so many projects starting um there have been definitely some dramas in inside the bankas Dow as in every da but uh you know there are still some great people uh around but what happened actually uh later on we actually got the

deal with uh large publisher so we got the kind of funds and the guidance how to do a nice uh book about house which we can share with everyone and uh with that also you know experts from the industry were very keen to support and this is this is kind of that thing I was talking uh uh give or take like you know if people are giving we can make better stuff because more people uh knows way uh more and as a part of it we also did uh some events where people meet up and create a new connections uh which was I would say uh pretty

successful what we learned you know it's hard to do events so thank you for ethereum prog doing this event I know it's very hard uh you know to get uh all the fun stakeholders uh together and make sure that everything works you know all speakers are on time and stuff like that also we were uh the book we signed the book deal probably like two and a half years ago and it will be published January 21st uh it's not very agile so we learned that like you know working with some like oldfashioned companies might takes way longer than uh than expected and also like you know how to actually engage new people which want to

build a down it's really hard to Target and you know if anyone has some advice how to do it like how to attract people who are want to build new businesses and we would like to maybe you know show them how they can do it as a dow uh that would be uh great advice so you know basically we want to continue this long term so we need to find some good business model which can support uh the project and also people in the ecosystem to have some uh income coming in income uh and then we can distribute it uh further and of course with that on board more uh Builders if we figure out how to Target

them and the last Dow I started workout Dow and we had nice bike ride with aned here uh this morning uh we went around the river was very nice uh so next time you should all join um and it's just a fun da so this Dow doesn't have any business model as of now it's just basically fun way to network we done events in uh uh here in Prague Paris New York uh also yesterday in Austin actually other Community member did run uh there and like it's really great great way to find new people and you have something in common you like to run or you like to climb or something so

it's easier to make new connections and as a dow uh you know you can just create this community and nurture it uh yeah at the beginning we you know maybe wanted to do it like that it will be some big thing but eventually we realized like we don't need to push it too too hard let's just grow it gradually let's just grow the community someone will come with new idea and maybe we can be on the path of getting some money in and are supporting more like you know Health and Wellness in the web three and also good thing not everyone is early birth uh so it happened to me in Paris I did 7:00 a.m. run do you know

how many people show up any takers yes one me uh but there was like 500 people sign up you know but too early probably some good party last night um and you know what we want to do in the future just enjoy uh those events get more community members involved so you know we can do run in Austin we can do run here in Prague different members uh can do it and then we just you know all meet also in digital space on Discord or Telegram and we can share uh our thoughts uh and that's pretty much it uh if you have any questions about Dows

about my projects uh or you are building something um you know let me know thank you thank you P for the speech and any question from the audience yes thank you uh it's going to be a short one you started your present actually I really liked your presentation thank you for that I really appreciate that you brought in real life personal experiences um you started with a historical overview of the let's say the the how the the the world economics

developed uh what is your view on uh on the development of of the the future economy and will Dows take over everything and will it happen that uh that people will leave their jobs and they will be members of countless Dows and we'll will we'll fiddle around with all the responsibilities around all of these Dows that they are part of and would that uh mean uh a complication that's all no uh thank you for the question uh so my way of thinking on the Dow space it's like the Dows the design of the Dows will evolve over time so as you see everyone will

leave their company it might not be dead why but maybe the company will become a dow means like it can be a like 10 people Dow it doesn't need to be 100,000 Dow every and everyone is token holder it can be you know smaller scale thing and basically I hope I hope in the future we will not talk about Downs same as we are not talking about llc's or you know other type of like entities we are creating we are just talking about our business so you know in the future I think this will be just like a type of company which is directly connected to the new Financial Market a crypto market so they can use the perks of it of like it's a more like economical Freedom you

know trans section cross border and so on so basically we will be moving from relying on like some old uh Financial rails and coming to the new ones and one one more thing towards that and while some historic examples is you know there were countries which just basically took um like savings from uh their citizens because they were like we need money you have saving so we take it uh this should not be they should not be able to do that if we are or on on a financial Market which we kind of co-own and nobody can really manipulate so that's

kind of where I'm heading with those also historical examples is like you know if we create more economical like concept which is not governed by any single party there is there is no way that one person one group of people can just take over and basically get the money from the little guy and just keep it thank you any other questions okay thank you I will be around so if you come up with a question let me know thank you thank you [Music]